Zodi Plays: Furi (Time To Wake Up)

Let's Plays Completed Let's Plays
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#1

Special thanks to Pinkhaired August for the Furi banner

Furi. A 2016 release by The Game Breakers, it is one of my favorite games. It is, at it’s core, a boss fight game, where your skill will be pushed to the limit. We’re gonna slice and shoot our way through the game, and I’ll be doing my best to provide strategies for each of the jailers we come across. I…think I do pretty well in these, but due to time constraints and just general stress, and the idea that this LP is meant to be a sort of cool down period between projects, we’re gonna be playing this fairly casually. I’ll maybe try out the harder difficulties to show them off, but ultimately I’m just not interested in them, and will leave them open for you guys to play through yourself.

So, what IS Furi, exactly? It is, as said, a boss fight game. You are The Stranger, a samurai of sorts with a cool sword that crackles with lightning, and a laser pistol. You have a three hit combo with your sword, you can shoot and charge up your gun in full 360 degree range, and you can charge up the sword likewise for a high powered dash attack that stuns enemies for a cool little attack animation. Defensively, you’ve got a dash that you’re invincible during the duration, and you can parry attacks that have a white sparkle to them. Parrying heals you a little bit, and if you parry at the exact right frame you do a full counter, stunning them so you can get that fancy attack animation out again. You can parry all enemy bullets except for lasers and waves, though that doesn’t heal you. And really, that’s it beyond the specifics of the boss you’re fighting. You CAN charge up the dash, but since you always wanna be on the move you (or at least, I) tend to just press it for a quick dash. I’ve heard you’re not actually supposed to be able to do this, but I have no idea it’s something that feels natural to do.

Bosses in Furi fight you in phases. Barring specific exceptions each phase has a long range blue health bar, and a close range orange health bar, and you’ve gotta beat both without falling to defeat that phase. Long range combat is where the enemy has the advantage, able to run away and launch high power attacks, whereas close range is where The Strange has the advantage. Their attacks are easier to avoid and not nearly as flashy as they typically are, and while he can’t use his gun he can instead charge himself up to make his next attack deliver a devastating blow. I make good use of this, because while parrying heals you, beating a phase entirely heals you as well. And besides, a dead enemy is an enemy that won’t hit you. Additionally, every boss has a desperation move as their final phase, where you must outlast them while they’re in an invincible state. Some require you to be more active about that survival than others, but we’ll cover that when we get to them.

Story wise, we are The Stranger. We’ve been locked in a prison, way up high, and we don’t really know why. But a friend, The Voice, is here for us. This lapin friend has freed us, and given us back our weapons. We need only set ourselves free from here. A simple story, but a solid premise and one that’s sure to lead us to fighting at full strength.

With that all said and done, lets talk about the LP itself. As sort of mentioned above, this is a more casual play through to show off the game and encourage others to take up the sword, so to speak. I will at least try to fight the bosses on the Furier difficulty, but overall we’ll be playing on the standard difficulty. Except for The Chain since otherwise he’s a tutorial boss and that’s sad. No spoilers please, while I have beaten this game before it’s a relatively obscure game so anyone watching this has a pretty high chance of not knowing what’s going on. Uploads will be Monday and Friday, same ole same ole. So yeah, lets get this party started.

I hear thunder. Pitter patter. Time to wake up.

Zodi Plays: Furi [1] Broken Chain

Video Length: 14:17

Our first fight is against The Chain, but if you’re familiar with my A Taste Of video on this series a long time ago, you may realize this is…not The Chain of old. That Chain was on the Furi difficulty, whereas this one is the Furier difficulty Chain, fought in the single fight mode. I decided to do this because the tutorial is overall not very good video watching, and this is a good way to really pump you up for the fighting ahead. It also gives The Chain some time to shine since otherwise he gets his butt handed to him pretty soundly (in my actual Furi mode fight with him this run I got an achievement off him for never getting hit once. Poor guy).

The Chain, even on Furier, isn’t that hard. He starts off simple enough, though his spread gun is tricky, a good mix of large shots that can be destroyed with your own gun fire and those annoying void shots that can’t be destroyed. A nice mix up of blue focused fire and purple focused fire (purple homes!) to change things up, and sometimes he just hits you with his stick real good. He’s got a pretty nasty wave attack, but it never really gets dangerous until he starts mixing it up with his staff throw (though both are, again, not really dangerous). In all his blue health bars he can do a dashing grab that you have to parry to avoid, otherwise you get into a stick wiggling minigame to avoid taking damage. It’s a little annoying, and I’m always bad at timing it, but I get pretty good at the wiggling so it’s fine. As you tear apart his health bar, he slowly starts charging with electricity, getting faster and faster. He eventually starts to throw out arena wide lightning blasts, though they’re telegraphed with a no-zone and are generally slow. There’s also just nothing stopping you from dashing through him, since enemies don’t cause contact damage in this.

In close quarters, he is at his weakest. He can do his stick combo, and he can warp around to do a rather annoying wave AOE, but with precise dashing you can evade it fairly easily. He does his little lightning sweeps as well here, but just like in long range mode you can dash through him to avoid it entirely, letting you set up for a charge slash if you want (or charging up your sword in general for some massive damage). He doesn’t block too often regardless of what phase you’re on, so feel free to lay on the attacks.

His desperation move is a massive wave of large blue shots and void shots that you need to shoot and wave through. As it goes on he starts adding waves of lightning to it that you’ve got to be mindful of, but short dashing over it isn’t all that hard. Once you get to the end of it, he forces you into melee combat where he lets out a torrent of lightning sweeps and stick attacks while invincible. Parry and dodge your way to success, and once he’s all tuckered out stab him in the faces.

And with that, The Chain is broken and our first jailer is defeated. We might be able to actually do this. Hope you all enjoyed, I’ll see you guys next time!

Also hey, next up after Furi is gonna be Phantom Hourglass, but it’s time again to do a vote on what game is next up AFTER that. You can find the poll here: https://www.strawpoll.me/16101404

5 Likes
Zodi Plays: Psychonauts (This One Time, At ESPer Camp...)
#2

I’m definitely pretty interested in seeing what the rest of the game has to offer now. If the first boss is wielding a wide variety of teleports and wide-area attacks, then I can only assume that the game’s going to keep raising the bar.

1 Like
#3

While this IS on a higher difficulty setting than normal, even tutorial Chain’s got all of these attacks, they’re just slower. So yeah, you’re in for some excitement.

#4

I got this game fro Humble Bundle but haven’t gotten around to playing it yet. LP looks interesting so far.

1 Like
#5

This will be a fun one to watch. I got only to the third boss and hit the end of the line there. A major thing to talk about is the soundtrack and system to this game, is extremely good.

1 Like
#6

Yeah I didn’t mention it in the first post but I’m putting the name of each fight track at the start of each fight, and I encourage you to go listen to the sound track later. This music is 100% my jam, almost universally, and it’s great.

And yeah, the actual mechanics of the game flow REALLY well. The soft, but still harsh, EDM style music plus the game just playing really simple and clearly, helps you get into a pretty good flow state. The exact sort of thing this game is shooting for.

1 Like
#7

I read this as “even tutorial-chan’s got…” because my brain is broke but thinking of this asshole torturer as Tutorial-chan is really funny to me.

1 Like
#8

The Chain is definitely that sort of dude off the clock, 100%

#9

Strap in, it’s time for more Furi.

Zodi Plays: Furi [2] Strap In

Video Length: 19:07

Our next foe to handle is The Strap, a woman strapped to a medical table/segway cross. No one knows what her deal is, according to The Voice she just kinda showed up one day while they were working on our Prison, screaming lasers at things and otherwise being a nuisance. So they put her prison inside of ours to serve as the second jailer. Two birds with one stone. Effective, for the most part.

Before we begin, a brief thing I forgot to talk about! Because it’s not in the Furier difficulty The Chain fight at all. Sometimes a blue shot is replaced with a green shot, which you can shoot to destroy and get a health pick up. These basically only show up in The Chain, The Strap, and our next boss. After that they never show up again pretty much, so don’t rely on them. The best way to heal is always going to be to defeat the enemy.

The Strap is an immediately different boss from The Chain. Her arena is massive, and covered in a mazelike structure of regenerating walls and pillars that block attacks on both sides. They can be destroyed briefly, but they’ll regenerate eventually. Unique to this fight, there are four squares in the center of the arena that you can hit to emit a sound only The Strap can hear, causing her to charge towards the square in question and lay into it with physical strikes and shots from her head cannon. It’s a good way to get her to drop her guard, though she’s still quite quick on the defense. You can also find little square marks on some pillars, which when shot get the same effect going.

As for fighting her, The Strap has the most clear differences in her various phases. She starts out strapped to her medical segway, shooting blast after blast at you. She’s got a variety of small and large basic blue shots, purple homing shots, and the occasional bullet blocking void shots. But where she excels is the laser. You can’t parry a laser, you can only avoid it, so be careful with your dodges. Like with The Chain, dodging through her is possible and recommended if you can do so. Some of her shots also start to do AOE wall attacks, which are basically wave attacks but instead of a long spread across the ground it’s a tall wall that slides across the ground. Same basic thing, but specifying it matters. She can also do melee attacks, but they’re not that effective until she reaches her second phase and takes out her scythe. Her melee attacks are way more dangerous here, coming out at odd timings because of the nature of using a scythe as a weapon. As the fight drags on her bullet attacks start getting stronger and more elaborate, seeming to focus on wide spread attacks to limit your movement so her laser sweep can take you down. Further abuse gets her off her segway and she starts fighting on all fours, making her physical swipes a little more dangerous but a little more predictable. Except for her leaping and charging attack, the charging attack especially frustrating since she basically just leaves the screen entirely to find a place to charge up to actually charge at you. Her leaping is the more dangerous of the two though, since it’s a bit tricky to time.

In close range quarters, The Strap is at a clear disadvantage. She only has access to her laser blasts, of her ranged options, and since you’re in such close quarters together you can easily get behind her. Her scythe still has the tricky timing to keep in mind, and she’s still got access to her leap attack (which can cause a cutscene moment where you’re almost guaranteed to take damage). That all aside, she’s quite easy to deal with in close range mode, and if you lay on the hurt you can take her out without much fuss.

Her desperation attack is a bit less impressive than The Chain’s, even comparing it to his Furi difficulty one. She generates an AOE wave around her for defense, and starts spewing out an endless spread pattern of bullets. They’re easy to maneuver through or shoot your way past, but it gets pretty crowded after awhile and it completely strips the arena of walls. After that, she starts sweeping her laser scream across the battlefield, slowly getting faster. A lot of people apparently have trouble with dodging through lasers, but all it takes is timing it right. After her lasers she becomes vulnerable, and you can smack her to get her into the close range part of her desperation move, where she basically just blasts a ton of lasers at you, ending with an AOE wall you have to dodge through. It isn’t the most difficult thing in the world, but she does a ton of damage so try not to get hit. A single solid strike will take her out after her invincibility ends, and with that The Strap has been defeated.

The prison within a prison has been defeated. It’s time to go. Hope you all enjoyed. See you guys next time for more Furi.

3 Likes
#10

So it needs to be said that, there is some implication that the STRAP does not want whatever that helmet is on. There are some animations that play where the STRAP bangs it against walls, or claws it off.

1 Like
#11

That’s fair. I’ve always read it as it being part of her, but it still works. She’s still screaming lasers at people, this is just the muzzle for it. In the actual sense of “it muzzles her” and in the figurative sense of “she’s a giant gun head”.

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#12

I wouldn’t at all be surprised if that was surgically put on her to better channel the laser in ways the prison can handle. It is rather ambiguous if she had that head before becoming a warden or after.

#13

Time for more Furi.

Zodi Plays: Furi [3] Crossed A Line

Video Length: 14:58

I think, after the dark dank thunder place, and the cool but dark prison, seeing such a vibrant pink area full of floating rocks and stuff is really a nice change of pace. It shows just how varied these prisons are. Of course then you remember…these are prisons, and we’re stuck in them. Time to move forward.

The Line, our next opponent, is an interesting fellow. He actually talks to us, for once. Not like Chain, who mostly just taunted us and told us about his plans to beat us up, and not like Strap, whose conversations are a bit more painful than most peoples. He actually speaks to us, and it’s interesting. He has probably one of my favorite lines in the game. Fitting, given his name. Don’t let his old man look fool you, he’s as powerful as everyone else.

The Line is also the first boss where they start really playing with the phases you fight them in, and also the first boss where we see that this game is just as much a SHMUP as it is a character action game. His first phase surrounds himself with shields, and we’ve gotta shoot them down. Every hit we land becomes a shot we have to avoid, and said shots slowly fly towards us, only to bounce off the edge of the arena back towards the center. They continue to bounce like this for awhile, though they do eventually run out of steam. Don’t think you’re safe just to pick away at his shields, he’ll send out waves of energy you’ll have to dodge. They get bigger as they move along the ground, so be quick about it. Each layer of shield bounces back stronger shots, and if you break every single shield you get an achievement (though I didn’t go for this, obviously). All it takes is a single hit to take out a whole chunk of life here, not even with a close range health bar! In his second phase he surrounds you with void orbs that you have to dodge through or parry (I prefer the parrying here) for a bit, after which he gets on top of a tower that resembles his shields. The shield is protected by those void orbs, which move out and then in every so often, letting you get your shots off, but every time you hit the tower it pulses out four waves and four regular shots. It’s pretty tricky to deal with, but predictable so you can time it.

Once you break his tower he’ll stop messing around and flood the area with bullets that slowly move in random directions. With the arena flooded, making dodging quite hard, he’ll start lunging at you with that sword of his. Parry him and time will freeze, locking the bullets in place. More importantly, it forces yourself into The Line’s time, making him unable to warp around and lunge at you. Instead he’s got waves to throw out with his sword, and arrhythmic combo attacks. I actually like how staggered and weird feeling his melee is, since he’s an older guy but also because it has a very “clock” like feel to it. I don’t know why it does, but it does. He’s also got AOE wall attacks which come out pretty fast, so be careful. Absolutely do not use your gun in this phase, as the bullets will freeze in the air. There is no limit to how many bullets you can have on screen at once and my very first time I played this I left enough shots layered in place that when I immediately ran into them I died like an idiot. Once you beat him up enough you’ll get into close range mode with him, where he’s significantly at a disadvantage. His attacks are slow, though they come out surprisingly fast and I always get caught by at least one, and he can do wide reaching wave attacks with that sword of his, but overall we’re just better in close range combat so we can push through pretty easily.

His third phase is much like the second in that he’s standing on top of a tower again. This time our shots make it send out a wall AOE attack, and The Line is sending an assault of void orbs at us. Occasionally three of the void orbs get replaced with green shots if you need to blast em for health. This is a surprisingly tough situation, but since he lacks the raw protection phase 2 has you should be able to take it down quickly enough. Then we have a repeat of the bullet flooding, only with the medium sized shots.

For The Line’s desperation attack, he focuses in the center of the arena and starts creating more of those void orbs. They very quickly start flying towards you, though it’s a loose homing so you don’t have to worry too much about them going straight for your thought. This isn’t a situation where you have to stutter your movements so you can avoid the locked on shots while also avoiding the new ones as they appear, it’s far more scatter shot and thus easier to dodge. The Line will also start sending out wall AOEs to make it harder. Once you’ve endured this for awhile, he’ll enter his true desperation attack. Multiple pillars appear, as he surrounds himself with an AOE wave and medium sized bulletes that slowly orbit around him, vomiting up more bullets with each tick of the clock. Our own shots against the pillars cause smaller blue shots to spray out everywhere, leading to a huge flood of damage to avoid. You have to be quick here, The Line’s attacks will slowly get faster and faster as this bit goes on, but if you go too fast it’ll be super hard to avoid everything. You need to follow the flow of his time. This is where the gun’s charge shot really shines, since it can cut through a lot of bullets (though not all of them, medium shots take a lot of energy out of it). After taking down each pillar, he starts warping around the field. Once you parry him one final time, stepping into his here and now, it’s over.

The Line defeated, we move forward. His words hang over us. I wonder what he means… Ah well. We’ll find out, in time. Hope you all enjoyed, I’ll see you guys next time.

Just a quick update on yonder poll. Y’all voted, and y’all have decided. The next LP, after Phantom Hourglass, which is after Furi, is…Tactics Ogre Knight of Lodis.

My curse of playing exactly one tactics RPG a year continues. I kid, I’m fine with this.

1 Like
#14

One step forward at a time.

Zodi Plays: Furi [4] Tipping The Scale

Video Length: 16:49

This is where things start getting interesting. A dark, sliced out chunk of the world. The Free World. Dank, swampy, and full of bio-luminescence and general spookiness. Even the music feels gross and corrupted. The Voice tells us this is the fault of one single impact. I wonder who caused it. He also tells us a bit more about his plans, but it’s…vague and mysterious, but thinking about it laterally will help you figure it out. He also tells us to disregard The Scale and his ravings. If we should…remains to be seen. Though he’s not wrong when he says The Scale is uh…not doing too hot. The fishy friend wants to stab us to death, so lets oblige him on the “to death” part.

The Scale is…equal parts very easy and very difficult. He has the special attribute of poisoning you with basically all of his attacks, making the screen wave and shift. That one minor thing aside he’s honestly not that difficult. For some reason I have a difficult time fighting him here though, whereas in my first run ever I basically destroyed him. This is the first fight where you’re gonna need to master the timing on your quick dashing, and the first real fight where if you get caught up in a QTE event you’re gonna have to actually put in some effort. The Scale’s main attack is blasting you with a series of green poisonous orbs, which leave a minor trail behind them that hurts just the same as the orb itself. In different phases the way these orbs are shot and how they move changes, first a quint spread, then blasting a bunch in a weird pattern, and so on. These are surprisingly easy to dodge if you just take a breath and pace yourself, and if you’re charging a slash or dash (or both, since you charge your sword back up quicker if you dash after charging a slash) you can easily maneuver around the patterns. He can also send out waves of poison in chunks of three, but they’re short and shallow so you can dash past em pretty easily. Be wary of his melee strikes, those harpoons leave a nasty mark and the timing on them is rather odd and hard to deal with. He’s also the first boss that will interrupt your combo, in his case by dodging backwards. His final real shot attack involves creating an AOE wave of poison around him, then blasting our shots in all directions, though like with the quint shot and it’s variants it’s not random, it’s a very strict pattern so dodging should be simple.

Those aren’t the only tricks up his sleeve mind you. He can dive under water to sneak attack you, sometimes even grabbing you for a rather difficult to deal with QTE. After taking a good deal of damage he’ll start making those clones of himself he showed off in his intro. They’re not that durable, falling in a single hit or too, but each one has access to all of the major shots he can do, and as a result dealing with them quickly is recommended. The Scale’s attacks are easy to manage, but in high numbers like that it can easily overwhelm you. Once you get to phase three he starts adding in the occasional, and quick quick wall AOE attack, and his clones can do those two so be careful! The only exception to this trend is in his final, non desperation phase, where his blasts are a more persistent, rotating series of orbs. The only other “trick” he has is that, unlike Strap and Line, in close range quarters he’s actually quite dangerous. He has large, far reaching wave attacks, usable as huge chunks or two wedges, he can do his AOE wall even in this mode, and his melee attacks can be done normally or after diving through the water to try and flank you. It’s a stark contrast from the last two bosses, and for this reason many people consider The Scale a sort of “wake up call” boss. But then every boss has that ignoble fame when you get down too it.

The Scale’s desperation move is probably one of the tougher ones to deal with. He sends out a cross grid of poison orbs, their trails lingering for the duration more or less. If you’re smart and clever like me, you will definitely intentionally eat a shot to the face to give yourself some breathing room in the center of the arena (or parry the orb for the same effect). This IS doable without doing that mind you, it’s just ever so slightly tougher since you have such an actually small space to move. While laying his poison trails he peppers you with regular medium sized bullets, and once everything is set up (regardless of parrying or face tanking to remove the orbs before they make a full trail) he’ll start summoning clones to send wall AOEs at you. Like with most bosses, once you survive the attack a few solid blows will take him out for good.

With The Scale defeated, sinking to the bottom of his swamp, we head onward. What was The Scale talking about? And what does The Voice mean by his motivation? All mysterious, and all with answers. Maybe we’ll find out next time? Or maybe we’ll just fight another cool boss. Regardless, hope you all enjoyed, I’ll see you all next time.

3 Likes
#15

I’m feeling furious. In the good way.

Zodi Plays: Furi [5] Hand in Hand

Video Length: 14:41

A desert wasteland, the sole sign of life a dome connected to a large power cord of some sort. Whoever lives here is pretty ascetic. It’s so barren that even the music barely goes above a whisper as we march towards our next foe. The Voice gives us some advice for focusing, and tells us a bit more about our situation. Beaten, imprisoned, but that’s all they can do. They can only delay us. The Guardians cannot kill us. So we march forward, focused on the task at hand. He tells us about our next foe. The man who caught us, who lead an army against us. It was about right here where I fully realized that we’re probably not the good guy here, and I love it. The Voice is clearly leading us towards that, and all we can do is wonder why. Within the dome we find our foe, The Hand, and his son. The Hand prepares himself, and the fight begins.

The last few fights have been a mixture of ranged opponents and of opponents who have a good mix of melee and ranged skills. Here we find a master (but not the master) of close range quarters combat. The Hand is, as you can tell from his appearance, almost entirely physical. His shield means we can’t get an attack in without baiting him into lowering his guard, and even then he can break out combo by catching it on his shield edge and forcing a quick time event. He is of course also entirely immune to ranged attacks for the most part, that shield of his reflecting any shot fired at him (though if you tennis a shot around for a bit you get an achievement). His melee attacks aren’t really hard to parry, but they have a ton of strength to them. What he lacks in unpredictability he makes up for in raw speed and power. Just because he’s a melee boss doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some ranged attacks of course, he can get in a corner and throw out a large, narrow expanding wave with his sword, and he can do a massive AOE burst by charging up a little, though he only ever does this in the middle of the arena so you can escape to the edges to avoid it. The secret to The Hand is just anticipation. Wait for him to open himself up, the minor moments where his guard is down, and strike as hard as you can.

In close range mode, The Hand doesn’t lose a bit of power. His melee attacks are just as strong and fast, and he can charge up briefly for a long range wave attack with his sword. He can still parry you into a quick time event in this mode, and can still interrupt you by bringing up his shield. He’s even still got that AOE burst attack, though it’s got shorter range due to him just not being able to charge up as much in close range mode. The Hand is honestly one of my favorite bosses in this because of the back and forth, he never really weakens as you fight him, compared to some of the others. He is dangerous at any range, especially since the arena is so small. He replaces the AOE burst with a full on wall attack in phase two, as well as getting an additional, wider wave attack he can perform. He can do these in close range as well!

In phase 3 he opens up with a rather unique attack. He creates a AOE hurt zone around him, and starts slowly rotating waves around the edge of the area. You can either dodge through them, or quickly follow the direction they’re taking. Either way, The Hand can’t be hurt here, so all you can do is endure. Wait for his guard to fall and strike. It’s here he starts comboing his wave slash attacks, and you can’t just dodge and strike anymore. You’ve gotta wait until he’s actually off balance. As with everything else he does, he combos in close range mode as well (though my, dare I say, excellent use of sword boosting prevented us from actually seeing that). After that he throws away his shield and focuses entirely on offense! Shots can hit him now, but they do piddly damage to the guy. He gets a little faster now, a little stronger, and more importantly can now just do a stunning blow on you can forces a QTE that will ALWAYS hurt you, no matter how fast you get out of it. The Hand is not to be trifled with. Also he can just shoot lasers from his sword now. This is the advantage of double handing a sword! You can dodge the lasers, but it’s got a tricky timing since they are IMMEDIATELY out once it’s fired.

After we’ve finally beat him to his last life, it’s time for his desperation move. And boy is it a move. He creates an AOE hurt zone around the edges of the arena, and then proceeds to fight you like normal. The area you can safely fight is minuscule, and the ring of damage is genuinely dangerous. Part of why The Hand is so route, so very much the same type of stuff just stronger and better, is because of this move. Master your dodges, concentrate, and strike when you can. But of course that’s not all. Once you’ve beaten his final blue life bar, it’s time for close range mode, where he becomes entirely invincible and just goes ham on you. All you can do is parry each blow. I don’t think you can even get a perfect parry at this phase, you have to endure every hit. And these hits don’t heal you when parried, so any damage you take is damage you’ll have to live with. He finishes it with an AOE wall attack, which does a ton of damage, but once that’s over he’s vulnerable and clearly off his guard. With a final strike, take him out.

With The Hand dead, we can leave this part of the prison. But this is, I believe anyway, the first area with actual optional dialogue! If you walk over to The Hand’s house, The Voice brings up…a really good point actually? Why did The Hand bring his son here? Why would you endanger the life of your son, and also effectively end it since it seems like the Guardians are jailed up here with us, unable to leave, if you loved him so much? An interesting question, and one The Stranger has no answer for. The Hand is right. We have no one and are nothing. At least, that’s how it seems. With the assurance that we shouldn’t over think it, we move on to the next prison world.

I hope you all enjoyed. I’ll see you guys next time for a really fun one, I think.

3 Likes
#16

Happy Civic Holiday. Have a Furi.

Zodi Plays: Furi [6] Siren Song

Video Length: 17:14

Welcome to the angel’s garden. My favorite looking prison world, and my favorite track in the game. A beautiful cathedral and garden where our next foe, The Song, rests. The Voice tells us not to listen to her, she’s a cold manipulator who is responsible for this Prison in the first place. She even had The Voice locked up, though for what he does not say. We head forward, and meet The Song…but she doesn’t fight us. She tells us to look around. Look at the beauty of this world. She asks us a simple request; cease fighting, at least for awhile, and stay with her. A tempting offer…and one we accept. And with that, we get the first possible ending in Furi. We have put down our sword and decided to stop fighting. We’ve decided to stop moving forward. Now, when you get an ending, it ends the game (as you’d expect). Some people where annoyed by this, since as it turns out taking this choice means you have to start over from the beginning. After all, the game has ended, the Stranger deciding to put down his sword. While the game doesn’t give you like, a warning about it, I feel like it’s a fair guess that this sort of thing would happen. So it doesn’t bother me that much. Still though, it’s an interesting choice, and one I’m glad they offered.

But in the end we cannot sit idle. We have to move forward. We have to escape the Prison. So we reject her offer, and she shows us the full extent of her power. If The Hand was a powerfully adept melee fighter, The Song is a powerfully adept ranged fighter. With her angel wings she can evade almost all of our actual attacks, and her sickle guns fire spurts of orbs we’ll have to contend with. She can slash to create thin, wide waves, and she can also do a powerful dash attack that we can thankfully parry. As far as bosses go, this is the one where I start having trouble. Partly because I didn’t practice, partly because The Song is just completely a hard counter to my play style (you’ll notice in many of the fights I don’t wait for a boss’s combo attack to finish, striking at the first immediate opening. This obviously does not work on The Song). Other attacks in her repertoire include firing off bombs that explode into orbs you have to avoid (and we do mean explode, they even have a blast radius!) and a massive barrage of bullets that is intended to cut off two thirds of the arena so you have a harder time avoiding her wave attacks. Luckily, what I lack in being able to shoot her effectively, I make up for in being mostly pretty spot on with the parries. She’s tough, but if you’re following along you can do it!

Interestingly, though not surprisingly, The Song doesn’t actually go into orange health for most of the fight. She’s too fragile, and she’s aware that as a sniper angel girl she really REALLY doesn’t want to get into close range combat with us. However, as we wear her down, she stops getting so flightly. Focusing more on high intensity attacks, raining down barrages of bullets at us. She also starts using lasers, and hers are a fair bit more effective than the other ones we’ve seen so far. Especially because she does something that I, Zodi, just had a hard time grocking. She now shoots lasers as she dashes, and I just continuously failed to notice she isn’t shining with the light that means you can parry that. She’s enveloped in lasers, you’ve gotta dodge through em. Like I said, this is the first fight where I start to run into trouble. Mostly of my own fault! She also starts doing that bullet barrage to cover two thirds of the arena, but sweeps a laser across instead of doing her three wave attacks, and she also does this from the bottom of the screen instead of the top of the screen, which actually messes me up a lot.

Phase 3 is where things start getting a bit nuts. She opens by covering the arena in shots that split into further shots, and they’re all medium size so shooting through them takes a bit. Then she does three AOE wall attacks at once, staggered and each slightly slower than the last, making for a rather hectic bit of dodging. She shotguns out void orbs, and now dashes multiple times, sometimes so far that even I can’t parry her on the first dash (and I think the game is actually designed to let her avoid being perfect parried until the last of her dashes, to let you heal up a little bit if you’re good enough). The attack that always gets me in this phase is her shooting out two medium sized shots that boomerang back to her, but they’re orbited by smaller blue shots. These always catch me off guard, and I’m not sure why. Best advice I’ve got for this is to keep your distance, she may be closing in for a drag out fight but keeping her at arms length is still a preferred idea here.

As the fight drags on and on, the arena adds pieces to it, and she finally stops holding back. She actually does full on melee attacks now, and she’ll just start vomiting stream after stream of bullets. She’ll also do an AOE explosion that covers the area around her in orbs, and this attack covers the entire size of the original arena you where fighting her in, so you’ll want to dodge away to the arms. Be careful though, you can fall here and it deals a fairly hard chunk of life. You can also be knocked OFF the edge, for the same damage. Another thing to watch out for is her “crack the sky” style attacks, where she shoots wildly into the air, creating little glowing circles on the ground that show a massive bolt of energy is gonna hit there. Avoid them as best you can. The best advice I can give for this phase is don’t be afraid of charging up your gun, if she wants a ranged battle she can have it. This phase also has an orange life bar, and she’s surprisingly tricky. Her gun shots are tough to avoid due to how fast they come out, and she has decently sized wave attacks that you’ve gotta dash to avoid as normal. The next phase is more of the same, though she’s far more willing to let loose those crack the sky style attacks to at the very least distract you, and she starts employing homing purple orbs. She also lets out an explosion that sends slowly rotating huge wedge shaped waves to the outer edge of the arena, onto the arms, and uh…this attack is very dangerous since if you fall off because of it you’ll likely get reset back up within it. You have a brief window of invulnerability after you take a hit, so try to…not dodge the way the things are rotating like I did. LIKE I SAID…this boss gives me difficulties. Especially once she mixes her laser into this attack. It’s a bit much to take in all at once!

Finally, her desperation attack. She shields herself with power, and starts blasting out wave after wave of blue orbs, slowly increasing in speed as she goes. Like with The Line, you’ve gotta destroy the pillars fueling her shield. But each pillar destroyed is another type of projectile you’re going to have to contend with. She mixes in two rotating lasers after the first is down, a very distinct red wall AOE that crawls it’s way across the stage after the second, and after the third the random crack the sky attacks start falling again, putting an unpredictable wrinkle into this fight once more. With all the pillars destroyed she creates a series of wedge shaped waves, trying to make it impossible for you to approach her safely, but with quick reflexes and a good understanding of how the dodge works you can zip over to her to deliver the final strike. She’ll also shoot void orbs and lasers at you as well, so be mindful of that.

With one final blow, the fight is over. The Song does not resist, and awaits her death. Which comes…but not as swiftly as The Voice expected. Hesitation. He isn’t sure why it’s there, but he knows one thing for sure. He likes it. And that’ll be it for today, hope you all enjoyed! A bit of a longer post than normal since The Song is so involved. See you guys next time for more of this.

Someone in the other thread made a note about how he’s not a big fan of Auto-walk as a function. This is good timing because of The Song’s offered choice, I was going to talk about it a bit anyway, so here is my little chunk of “why Auto-walk is good actually”. Enjoy!

The reason auto-walk exists is because some people just want to go to the fights. So let them go to the fight. Trust me, they do something with this mechanic that’s actually interesting. As for why it’s in the game, ignoring the actual thematic stuff for it it’s just an accessibility thing. Some people aren’t as good at navigating these winding art pieces that they call the calm before the storm. I know I have trouble with it, the jumping around camera angles leave me a little unsure of where I am and where I’m going sometimes. Additionally, it’s a good deal of time where you’re holding a direction on your gamepad’s control stick, which while minor is definitely going to wear down your strength after a bit, so auto walk lets you REST for the next fight.

It’s also meant to be cinematic. Not A cinematic, a cutscene you watch, but something dramatic. It helps pushes forward what kind of person The Stranger is. Walking methodically to his destination, no real reason to stop beyond his own desire to look at how beautiful some of these worlds are (if the player so chooses). Walking slowly in silence towards his goal as The Voice tells him about who he’ll face, and why he faces them. It’s important for the themes of the game. Aside from The Song, The Stranger doesn’t have a choice. He can either go forward, or not. He’s free to explore the confines of his prison, but only within those same confines. So the only true path forward is forward. And that’s what auto-walk represents, his drive to escape. In order to stay with The Song, you have to not move, the first choice The Stranger really has is “not to act” and for that reason, I really like Auto-walk and what it represents in the game.

3 Likes
#17

Happy friday. Get a Furi.

Zodi Plays: Furi [7] Burst With Rage

Video Length: 17:24

We start off in a rather interesting room, equipment strewn about, rock surrounding clearly constructed areas, and in the center…holograms showing all the various prison worlds. And even stranger, our friend The Voice defeats the Guardian of this prison world! Though…as we walk through the world, it becomes clear The Voice is misleading us, just a little. Not that he means to trick or betray us, he’s actually betraying everyone else. The Voice was The Architect, who created this vast prison. But The Song had him imprisoned in here, likely to assist with keeping it running. However…he had a daughter. No one keeps a father from his daughter. The thin line between love and madness. We move on, to the next prison world.

With that potentially shocking reveal done, our next foe to face is The Burst. Her world is full of hexagons, and a happy little drone friend scans us, becoming the first voice beyond The Voice to talk to us during our walk ups to the boss. Though in this case, it’s more talking to The Burst. Giving HER information on US. And what information it is. The Stranger is clearly…odd, to say the least. His DNA features unknown to her database, he has been fighting and running for all this time without any sign of wear or tear, and his heart is a steady 8 beats per minute. We are a mystery…one The Burst is interested in only in so far as how she can kill us. With a devious trap, we fall down to her massive arena, and begin the fight.

The Burst is a unique fight, to say the least. Her focus is entirely on ranged attacks, and it shows. She even uses automated drones to assist her, giving us targets to shoot instead of her! Their are two variety of drone, drone’s that shoot homing purple orbs and drones that shotgun out a wave of medium sized orbs. Both varieties can be taken out fairly quickly, but don’t focus too heavily on them. Your real target is The Burst. Additionally, as the phases roll on, she starts adding land mines to the field which detonate into an AOE burst. I’ve never found them all that dangerous, but it’s worth noting them at least. While you’re dealing with her drones, don’t expect to be left alone. She IS a sniper after all, and once you’re within sights she’ll start locking on with that aiming laser of hers. Duck behind cover before she fires, because that shot will kill you in one hit, more or less. She always goes for the head and she never misses. With a VERY well timed dodge it might be possible to juke the laser, but it’s better to just hide behind some hexagon wall cover.

Once she’s actually started targeting you though, that’s your time to shine. You know where she is now, so you can duck and weave your way over to her. She’s typically invisible where she’s firing from, thanks to her cloak, but if you charge slash into her it’ll break her cloak and force her to tangle with you for a bit. The fact that she IS a sniper is warranted, but she’s deadly even up close. She can machine gun fire some smaller orb shots at you, quickly followed up by a rapid fire shot of homing orbs, she of course has a melee attack that’s surprisingly quick to come out (having a bayonet on a sniper is goofy as heck, but it’s sure effective!) and she can use here cloak to try and make you lose sight of her. She’s agile enough to dodge your combo attacks too. She’s even got an AOE wall attack, and the walls are surprisingly thick so dodging it can be tricky. She can also shoot grenade orbs that explode into AOE bursts. This is a lot of stuff to handle, but you can do it. Like with The Song, she doesn’t have many instances of the orange health bar, which makes her a bit easier, but don’t be fooled. This by no means mean she’s weak.

As the fight drags on, she slowly adds moves to her arsenal. An AOE wall grenade, charging up to shoot three larger homing shots, a crazy wave move that you have to use cover to avoid since it covers the whole arena you’re in (since the cover blocks off the rest of this massive fighting ground). Her biggest trick however is, once you’ve beaten her twice, instead of lingering around to fight you, she’ll quickly evade to the center of the arena. It’s here she shows her true power, using her sniper rifle to it’s fullest potential. Get behind those walls or you WILL be killed. Also somewhat embarrassingly, if you linger too long fighting her drones when she goes to the center, eventually she’ll get mad at leave to start sniping at you as normal. I never realized this is what she does when she says “keep your eye on the prize” since it had never happened to me before!

But yeah, once she’s in the center she starts breaking out all the stops. Blasting her grenades everywhere, taking out the sniper rifle for the hopes of a one shot kill, and once you push her even further going so far as to cloak and attack you with melee to try and fake you out. Luckily we can still see the shimmer of her form that lets us parry her. She’ll also start combining moves from all her phases into this one, using every last bit of her strength to take us down. The hardest of these moves is when she creates a massive AOE wave effect that slowly rotates around her, as she also rotates a bunch of small blue shots in the same direction. This is a lot to handle at once, and I had the misfortune of being locked off into a somewhat uncomfortable part of the arena due to her cover walls when she first did this! This is also when she starts actually having orange health bars, though given she is a sniper she’s actually very ineffective at this specific close-range mode. The best she’s got is that she can force a QTE by going invisible, and while you can’t DAMAGE her if you succeed at it, she can’t damage you unless you fail.

Finally, she hits her desperation move. Like many before her, she creates a little AOE damage field around her to protect her. Then she starts firing. Wave after wave of void bullets, plus tiny little wedges of wave attacks. The void bullets even have a thin string of wedge between them all, meaning you HAVE to dodge through them, not just duck and weave. She’ll stop firing this attack to snipe at you, leaving you to quickly duck behind the one bit of cover that pops up, and you continue. This time with two drones added, firing more of those void shots chained up with waves. Once you’ve evaded enough sniper shots, her energy runs out and you can close in for the kill. But she has one last trick up her sleeve, true stealth mode. She becomes entirely invisible, the only thing you can see the shine of light that shows you can parry her. You don’t have to parry her if you know when to properly attack between her blocks and your own guarding, but it can be really tough. With one final strike, we finish her off.

The Burst, for all her skill and power, was mostly using tech as it turns out. With manual control off, her pride overwhelming her sense of preservation, we can easily get in and kill her. And with that, we’ve killed her. Two guardians remain. The next one is my favorite, perhaps my most favorite fight in the whole game. I hope you’ve all enjoyed, I’ll see you guys next time.

We’re continuing to walk our path, and slowly it reaches the end. But what will we find there? Only time will tell.

3 Likes
#18

It’s time for my favorite boss oh man.

Zodi Plays: Furi [8] Pushed To The Edge

Video Length: 8:12

A sandy beach with calm, purple waters. Few signs of life except for the occasional boat. The Voice tells us about our foe, as always, and he starts with an interesting question. What would you do if you had an eternity to yourself? It’s a pretty relevant question, the idea of immortality, of living forever, it’s a heavy one. There’s only so much a person can DO. Unless you dedicate yourself entirely to something. That’s The Edge. He’s spent a long time training for this moment, in the precaution, one could even say hope, that we’d escape. And here we are. Swordsmen against swordsmen. No words are needed, just the clanging of our wills against each other.

The Edge is, as you’d expect, a very hard boss. Unlike every other boss we’ve fought so far, he doesn’t have BLUE health. He fights purely in close range mode, with us, and he is just as skilled as that sounds. He doesn’t really fight fancy, he has no real special tricks (though he does have a wave AOE attack in phase 2) he just has perfect execution. He has a multi hit combo, and he has a three hit combo that makes massive waves you have to dodge. When attacking him, unless it’s at the end of a combo where he’s left open, you’ll really only get one hit in. He can dodge, parry, or just block his way past everything you throw at him otherwise. Unlike every other boss, getting him into a QTE that YOU’VE initiated is the same as him putting you in one, and you have to win to get that bonus damage, so charge slashes aren’t very useful. In terms of raw health, he doesn’t have much…but he will defeat you in two or three hits, so the same goes for you as well. I had never actually SEEN his AOE wall attack before, thus why I got hit by it, since as you might imagine from my other fights I tend to err on the side of hyper aggression, sneaking in attacks after parrying attacks that are punishment for attacking the enemy’s block. The first time I fought this guy I got the achievement for finishing a five in under 5 minutes, and to be honest it feels like it’s almost impossible not to get this, given how hard he pushes you.

His third phase, he changes thing up. Like the legendary swordsmen of legend, when it appears the blade is not serving him he takes up the oar. We switch to a 2D arena, which is really interesting, and fight there. With the oar, it is now impossible for us to hurt him via QTE, any instance where we get him in one or he gets us in one is one where we cannot hurt him, just avoid being hurt. This is where my aggression shows it’s major flaw, because he’s near impossible to hit this phase if you don’t let him tire out, but I persist on attempting to sneak in that damage. It FEELS cool, is all. Also in this phase he DOES have access to one single ranged attack, wherein he shoots an energy wave by swinging his oar hard enough. I had never seen him do that in this phase before, and thus I got destroyed by it. I’m fine with all of the times I do lose a life in this fight though, since I end up getting to show you all his best quotes!

Aaand then we hit his desperation move. Wherein we learn that…my aggressive nature was preparation for this. As far as I can tell, the only way to deal damage to him here is to aggressively get in sneak attacks between his attacks while he recovers from your blocks. You can scratch him a bit at the start, after he calms down from slashing out wave after wave of energy at you, but otherwise you have to push yourself to the limits The Edge has reached to beat him. I imagine you can also sneak some damage in after his AOE burst attack at the end of his combo attacks. Unlike the other bosses, his desperation attack doesn’t END until he does.

The Edge falls, and as ever The Voice praises us, impressed with our skill. The Edge is the strongest, hardest foe in the prison, and we’ve got only one more Guardian left. I hope you all enjoyed. I’ll see you next time, for our escape from prison. It won’t be the end, but it will be a conclusion to our goal. I wonder what will happen.

3 Likes
#19

I figured there’d be a Platinum-esque rival battle at some point. Didn’t expect him to come at you with an oar. The player mechanics lend themselves really well to a dangerous boss, and it’s really neat how either character dies very quickly.

#20

I have to say The Edge is probably my favorite character seen so far. The entire fight is just oozing with style and is an excellent homage to one of my favorite Japanese myths or stories. He also seems probably the friendliest of the bosses encountered so far. Additionally The Voice is really having a pot calling the kettle moment there considering his entire reason for jail break, and the potential effects of it.